There is no specific knowledge required to join. If anything, it is desirable to have a basic understanding of system programming.
Yes, there are students who are conducting joint research with companies on machine learning-related topics. They are conducting research in areas such as reinforcement learning, Bayesian optimization, and natural language processing.
Students have gone on to various places such as Google Japan, rinna Co., Ltd., Recruit Co., Ltd., Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting LLC, UBS, Nautilus Technologies, Inc., NRI, IBM, NTT DATA, Yahoo Japan Corporation, CyberAgent, Inc., Tata Consultancy Services Japan, SFC doctoral program, SFC master’s program, University of Tokyo master’s program, HEC Paris, and even middle school teachers.
It’s important to be sincere and to communicate. Although the professor may seem busy, he is always open to student inquiries. If you’re having trouble, I recommend that you don’t hesitate to consult him.
Firstly, we gain programming skills by implementing a B+ tree in C++, and learn about concurrency control by understanding Silo. Secondly, we read papers from top journals and reimplement them, propose techniques for improvement, and publish papers. Lastly, while understanding real-world applications (such as cloud, robotics, quantum computers, security, etc.) through joint research, we redesign systems focusing on data technology and open up new research areas.
The professor is an utterly unassuming person, just like any ordinary person you would find anywhere. Because they blend so much into the background, make sure you don’t overlook them.